THE 2ND SEX &amp; THE 7TH ART: WOMEN DIRECTORS IN FILM

Bite-sized blog post: Sofia Coppola

SOFIA COPPOLA began her career as a still photographer and actress in her famous father’s films, playing an infant in a christening scene in The Godfather (1972). She learned all about making movies first hand by growing up in the industry and after directing a few shorts made her first feature film The Virgin Suicides (1999) which premiered at Sundance.

She was the third woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director with her film Lost in Translation (2003) for which she won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

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Where to watch her films:

HULU

Bite-sized blog post: Claudia Weill

Stanley Kubrick praised CLAUDIA WEILL’s first feature film Girlfriends (1978) as one of the most interesting American films of its time, comparable in quality to European films (high praise from Kubrick).

Weill most recently directed for the popular television series Girls.

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Where to watch her films:

HULU

Bite-sized blog post: Gillian Robespierre

GILLIAN ROBESPIERRE co-wrote and directed the Independent Spirit Award nominated film Obvious Child (2014) based on the short she created of the same name after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The film was funded in part by a crowdfunding via a Kickstarter campaign and premiered at South by Southwest.

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Where to watch her films:

VIMEO

Bite-sized blog post: Gurinder Chadha

GURINDER CHADA was a BBC news reporter who made award winning documentaries in England before her fiction feature film Bend It Like Beckham (2002) became a US (and international) success.

She continues to direct for the screen and has recently turned Bend It Like Beckham into a stage musical.

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Bite-sized blog post: Dawn Porter

DAWN PORTER is a documentary filmmaker whose directorial debut Gideon’s Army (2013) premiered on HBO. The film about public defenders allowed her to use her knowledge as an attorney as well as skills as a filmmaker.

She runs the production company Trilogy Films and her second film Spies of Mississippi (2014) was part of the PBS Independent Lens Series.

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Where to watch her films:

VIMEO

PBS

Bite-sized blog post: Shirley Clarke

SHIRLEY CLARKE began her career as a dancer and choreographer and used those skills as a filmmaker.

Her first feature The Connection (1962) was based on the play by Jack Gelber about heroine addicted jazz musicians, shot in the cinematic realism style of the 1960s Clarke was one of the directors breaking ground in a new style of cinema.

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Where to watch her films:

FANDOR

Bite-sized blog post: Leah Meyerhoff

When in pre-production for her first feature film I Believe in Unicorns (2014) LEAH MEYERHOFF gathered a group of female filmmakers for a dinner party to talk about their experiences. That one night snowballed into an organization known as Film Fatales with chapters all over the country and expanding internationally.

Meyerhoff went to Berkeley High School in Northern California and got her MFA at NYU.

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Where to watch her films:

ON HER WEBSITE

HULU

VIMEO

Bite-sized blog post: Tamra Davis

TAMRA DAVIS began her career directing music videos for popular bands in the eighties and nineties including the Bangles, Depeche Mode and NWA.

She has gone on to direct feature films including Chris Rock’s “rockumentary” spoof CB4 (1993) and Billy Madison (1995) starring Adam Sandler, direct for television and direct and produce a documentary about her friend, the renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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Where to watch her films:

YOUTUBE

AMAZON (PRIME STREAMING)

Bite-sized blog post: Sarah Polley

SARAH POLLEY is a Canadian actress who made a career in independent film before directing a few shorts and attending the Canadian Film Centre’s directing program in 2001.

Her feature film directorial debut Away From Her (2006) garnered her an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Her most recent film was a documentary hybrid about her family Stories We Tell (2012).

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Where to watch her films: